20/02/2013 – Jefferson Airplane-White Rabbit (1967)
It’s been 8 years since Hunter. S Thompson took his own life. He was 67 years old.
Hunter S. Thompson shaped my teenage years, with his lurid stories or debauch days and nights drinking and his moral compass. Through reading his books I realised that anything was possible, you just had to be strong minded enough to follow through what you start.
The one book that jumped out at me more was The Curse Of Lono. I don’t know if it was because Hawaii has always interested me, or I found the marathon scene hilarious (and I used similar tactics once at the London Marathon on the stragglers who were dying after 12 miles), or that Ralph Steadman was in it (and there were more of his illustrations than in previous books), or that I just liked how it flowed, I don’t know, but as soon as I finished it I immediately re-read it.
One of the saddest things about his death is that there won’t be any new books. I’d love to have known what he would have written about Barack Obama being elected as President? Have spread would he have bet on for this year’s Super Bowl?
I’m going to end now with some of my favourite HST quotes:
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. “
“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation. “
“The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President. “
“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up. “
Appears he one of was Oneof God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die.